Objective 1: Defined the Target Audience

Our primary focus during week one was collecting preliminary data for objectives 1 and 2, which were defining the target audience and providing keyword list, respectively. We needed to collect two types of data:

1. Tourist affinities towards Armenian attributes 2. Expert opinions on marketing Armenia

4.1.1 Tourist Affinities towards Armenian Attributes

To represent this data, we created a data collection matrix. Our plan to understand and define a target audience for the websites revolved around understanding influencing factors behind potential tourists. To do this, we created a list of “attributes” of Armenia that would be marketable to a potential tourist. We came up with the following list:

1. Monasteries and Churches

In addition to this, we also created a list of the different types of tourists who would be interested in visiting Armenia based on their various interests. We came up with this next list:

1. Wine Enthusiasts 2. Adventure tourist 3. Religious enthusiast

We used these two lists to create our matrix for representing this data below:

Figure 15: Data collection matrix with the rows representing attributes of Armenia and the columns representing the different types of tourists

This matrix was filled up by surveying the general audience using a structured questionnaire.

The survey was sent out electronically through Google forms, and we received 338 unique responses.

We first sent it to social media groups and mailing lists that we were a part of, but then we received a lot of under 25-year-olds. We then decided to join various tourism groups on Facebook, to diversify our reach. Joining different groups worked out quite well, as we got a reasonable spread of age groups answering our questionnaire. However, the results were still slightly skewed towards the younger generation.

Once the data was received, it was further broken up based on gender, age and tourist type to analyze and create our final deliverable. To further analyze this data and perform statistical analysis, we utilized Microsoft Excel. We looked for the average for each group’s affinity to a

categories was small enough, that we concluded that the means have a statistical significance.

For tourist types with low sample number, for example, the 65+ age category, the margin of error is larger than in tourist types with a higher sample number.

To better represent our findings, we decided to implement a heat map method for our final deliverable. A heat map utilizes color saturation to give a visual feel to data. In the heat map that we created, the more a tourist is likely to find an attribute appealing, the more saturated the cell is.

A portion of the final deliverable, with the data collected through the surveys, can be seen below:

Figure 16a: Final deliverable measuring affinities of demographic groups towards Armenian attractions and confidence interval margin of error for each pair

In the first section of the table above, the higher the affinity towards an attraction, the greener the cell is. The lower the affinity to an attraction, the more red the cell is. In the second section of this table, representing the margin of error, the higher the number, the more inconsistent the results are and therefore the redder the cell. The greener cells are lower numbers which show that the results are more consistent for that attribute and demographic group.

Using the data collected, we concluded that most respondents were interested in Armenian cuisine and least interested in monasteries and churches. This finding is important because the tourism industry in Armenia is centered around the religious history of the country, specifically its churches and monasteries. Most of Armenia tourism promotion emphasise the presence of old churches and monasteries in the country. It was interesting to see that potential tourists are not that much attracted to these attributes of Armenia. Over fifty-eight percent of the respondents were male, and their highest mean was cuisine followed by mountainous terrains. They ranked monasteries and churches the lowest, with a 2.9 score. For the females, they rated cave exploration and cuisine as most interesting and monasteries and churches as the least interesting.

We further organized the results into three age groups; under 21s, between 21 and 40, 40 to 65 and lastly over 65 year olds.

Figure 17. Age Demographic Preferences from Survey

In both age groups under 17 and 18 to 35, the respondents had churches and monasteries as the least interesting attribute. Additionally, the under 17 years category ranked cave exploration the highest while the 18 to 35 age group found cave exploration and Armenian cuisine the most attractive attributes. The over 35-year-old group ranked cuisine their highest and wildlife tours their lowest. The over 65-year-old group had an overall low ranking for most attributes, but they

4.1.2 Expert opinions on marketing Armenia

To obtain further information and create recommendations on how to define and market to our target audience, we interviewed experts from some of the demographic groups. We selected these experts based on groups we thought would be most interested in Armenia and Vayots Dzor.

We found these groups by using the data collected from the surveys mentioned earlier. These experts included prominent wine enthusiasts such as Marie Keep, Senior Vice President of Fine Wines at Skinner Inc. as well as Peter Graffman, former president of the Wine and Food Society of Boston. We also interviewed Mark Aghajanian, an avid adventure tourist.

Through these interviews, we were able to better understand the makeup of the wine enthusiast and adventure tourist communities. These experts also suggested ways in which websites can cater to these target groups and recommended methods to improve upon our current strategies.

For example, Marie Keep suggested that we investigate which countries are already importing Armenian wines. She articulated that it may be easier to market Armenia as a wine destination to a population that already has exposure to Armenian wines. Marie Keep also warned against over-polishing the websites and publishing too much information about the destinations. She explained that part of the allure of exploring Armenia as a wine destination would be discovering something new. If we published the whole experience on the website, there would be little motive for someone to tour Armenia for themselves.

Mark Aghajanian agreed and affirmed that discovering something new was a key motivation for an adventure tourist. He advised that the website conveys the truly unique features of Armenia and refrain from heavily advertising generic attractions.

Peter Graffman shed insight on why and how he travels specifically as a wine tourist. He asserted that his main inspiration for travel include the culture and history of a country. He recommended that the focus of the Vayots Dzor website be on the wine culture rather than less interactive activities such as wine tasting. This would include promoting wine festivals such as the Areni wine festival as well as activities where tourists could observe and become involved in the wine growing and harvesting process. He revealed that one of his favorite activities included visiting vineyards to form a personal connection with a winemaker whose wine he has tried before and is fond of.